Maelstrom
by Sailor Grape
Summary: Tristin finally gathers the courage to see Rory again after three years of missing her. Now all he has to do is survive his little venture into Stars Hollow... (Trory)
1. Crashing

Title: Maelstrom 

Author: GrapeSmshr

Coupling: RoryTristin

Rated: PG

Posted on: 3-6-05

Thanks to: otownroxx, my lovely sis (who gives me access to all of the movies with CMM so I can drool over him... and, of course, for beta'ing!)

A/N: Gah! I am now an obsessive Trory fan! I hadhadhad to write this, I truly did. This is my first (published) Trory fic. I'll keep this a/n short. Read on and enjoy!

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Chapter 1: Crashing

Tristin Dugrey had thought about this long and hard. Mulled over it. Pondered it. Analyzed it until he could have sworn his brain was going into a frenzied meltdown. All of that thinking and mulling and pondering and analyzing, and it took him less than a split second to take action after he finally made up his mind.

Then again, that was how it always was with her. Except back then, he acted without thinking. Around her, around anyone. Thus was the reason his life had been turned upside down and inside out and all of those other clichéd woe-is-me soap opera diatribes. Yes, he had received somewhat more than a slap on the wrist, and, while he was grateful for the discipline now, back then he had felt like his father had orchestrated an apocalypse just for his benefit.

Sadly, their relationship had never recovered. Years later, he was still unpleasantly formal when speaking to his father. But how could he talk to someone who wanted nothing to do with him? No, there was nothing left for him at home. Which was why he was currently heading toward a not-on-the-map town that he had only visited one time in his twenty-one years. Just once. If life had been kind, he would have visited many more times.

He still didn't know why her grandparents so willingly gave away her address to him. Apparently they were impressed with the way he had cleaned up, the change in his attitude and outlook on life. Or maybe it was his surname. Either way, he received what he had been wanting, and now he was heading down the narrow street that led into the quaint town of Stars Hollow.

He knew it the moment he arrived. He didn't need the brightly decorated welcome sign to point out that he was now in Stars Hollow. It was almost as if the town was in fact its own little world. In a way, he supposed it was.

Following the curve in the street, he found the house with no problems. The two cars parked out front showed that someone was home. He parked behind the jeep and stepped out, nervously wiping his damp hands on his faded jeans. This was it, the proverbial moment of truth.

Slowly walking up the steps, his hand paused in mid-knock as he read the note on the door that said, 'We're next door.' Well, that was a curveball. Now there was the question of whether he should go or just wait. The note was pretty much an invitation, he reasoned, so it would be all right to go next door.

Mind set, he began walking to the next house over. He was surprised to find other people heading toward and into the house's backyard. Was there some kind of party? Now he was really curious.

Falling in easily with a group, he followed them into the back. There were rows and rows of folding chairs and a poorly constructed podium at the front of them, where a blonde woman was bawling her eyes out. He sank into a chair in the back just as another woman rose from a seat in the front row and ushered the blonde woman away from the podium and into a seat.

The woman looked vaguely familiar to him, but he couldn't recall having ever met her before. But as she said her next words, he knew exactly who she was and why she looked so familiar.

"And now we'll hear some kind words from my daughter, Rory."

She was replaced at the podium by a younger version of herself, and Tristin felt his breath catch in his throat. It had been over three years since he had seen her. Rory Gilmore. The reason he was in this backyard. He snapped out of his thoughts as he realized that she was speaking.

"He was a beloved member of our town," she was saying. "There wasn't a day that I didn't see him playing out in the yard. He always looked so happy and content. We're going to miss him..."

This was a funeral, Tristin realized with a start. He had crashed a funeral. Well, he couldn't leave now. That would be disrespectful. So he settled back into his uncomfortable seat and listened to the remainder of Rory's eulogy.

He sat back patiently and listened to the next speaker, a man who talked about how Claude-who was the deceased, Tristin surmised-always liked to chase him around and frightened him so much that he hid under his mother's bed for hours until he was certain that Claude was gone. Tristin had to bite his lower lip to keep from laughing as he pictured this grown man hiding under his mother's bed. He vaguely remembered Rory telling him years ago that the townspeople were quirky, but he just took it as an exaggeration. Seems she hadn't been exaggerating.

A couple more people talked about Claude, but Tristin tuned them out. Instead he focused his sole attention on Rory, memorizing her from the back, just like he had when he sat behind her in class. It had been so long.

Too long.

As the last speaker sat down, Rory took the podium again and said, "Thank you for attending our memorium of Claude. I know that Babette and Morey appreciate your love and support." Saying this, the blonde woman started bawling more loudly. Raising her voice, Rory continued, "The wake will be next door, at my mom's and my house. Everyone is welcome." She made to leave, then added, "Sookie made lots of food."

"Food!" the blonde cried, jumping up and hauling a man to his feet before dragging him out of the backyard.

Everyone else began to rise and amble leisurely out of the backyard and next door. Tristin remained in his seat, watching Rory and her mother go from group to loitering group and thank them for their attendance. A girl Rory's age said something that made Rory and her mother laugh, and Tristin found himself leaning forward to hear the throaty laugh that much better. He always did love to hear her laugh, even though he was never the one to cause her to do so.

The girl began to walk away, and Rory watched her go. That was when she noticed Tristin sitting there in the back by himself. He held her gaze, noticing how her eyes widened in obvious shock.

"_Tristin_?" she called out incredulously.  
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Hahaha! Was that a mean place to end it? Gotta love being the author. Oh! I have so many ideas for this fic, so hopefully it'll write itself. I'm so excited!

Please review! I loooooooove to hear your thoughts/criticisms (especially thoughts, though!). I do so appreciate you guys taking the time out to read this as well. You're awesome!

Until next chapter, then. Peace out!


	2. The Town's Newest Zoo Exhibit

Title: Maelstrom 

Author: GrapeSmshr

Coupling: RoryTristin

Rated: PG

Posted on: 3-29-05

Thanks to: _otownroxx_, my lovely sis (who was quite busy with school as we all are and found the the time to beta this for me... a task I much appreciate!)

A/N: Sorrysorry it took so long to get this chapter out! School has been majorly kicking my butt lately... I can't _wait_ til I graduate! Four more months, woot! ((clears throat)) Ehh, sorry about the enthusiasm there. Back to the fic. I had so much fun writing this chapter. Friendly banter is always fun to read. You know what else is fun to read? Yep, you guessed it: fics! So without further ado, read on and enjoy!

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Chapter 2: The Town's Newest Zoo Exhibit

Tristin almost didn't believe it; this was too good to be true. But when he took a step forward and tripped over a folding chair, cold hard reality came and smacked him in the face. He was always more suave in his dreams. And he _had _dreamt of this, on more than one occasion.

Luckily, Rory must have taken pity on his clumsy self and met him halfway. She stopped not two feet in front of Tristin, very obviously sizing him up after their three-year separation. He could feel the weight of her gaze rake over him, scanning inch by inch until she met his nervously narrowed eyes. A slow smile crept onto her face, and he stumbled backward as she launched herself into his arms, clutching the back of his shirt tightly.

Tristin certainly hadn't been expecting such an enthusiastic greeting, but he wasn't about to complain. Even his dreams, where everything was perfect, were nothing compared to this moment. He knew it sounded undoubtedly corny, but it was true. Pulling back, Tristin couldn't help the wide smile that lit up his face. "Rory."

She looked up at him expectantly. Even growing another inch and a half did nothing to the still half-foot height difference that he had over her. "Tristin?" She was full-out beaming at him now.

The one thing that struck him was how Rory did not seem to have any ill will toward him for the events of the past. He saw that much in her eyes. No matter how much she tried to guard her expressions, she never was quite talented enough at it to hide her real feelings from him. That was why it had hurt him so much when she rejected him time and time again; he could tell that she had meant it.

But now, now her face only mirrored surprise and delight. After a short pause, her face crinkled as she began to giggle. When he shot her a questioning look, she said, "You didn't call me Mary."

"Well, I can always adopt the nickname again if it strikes your fancy," he drawled. "Regression always had been easy for me."

"Feel free. In return, I can regress and use one of _your_ nicknames," she countered with a nonchalant shrug.

"Which are...?" He couldn't hide the curiosity in his voice. She had given him a nickname? More than one, even? That meant he affected her more than he realized. The thought made him grin inwardly.

"Bible Boy or Spawn of Satan, take your pick." She smirked as his jaw dropped. Honestly, what was he expecting? While extremely hot - she had never been able to deny this fact, even though she tried to ignore it at Chilton - he never exactly had a stellar attitude toward her, choosing to mock and tease her to no end. She felt the nicknames were more than fitting.

"And here I was thinking my nicknames fell along the lines of Studmuffin or Heartthrob."

"Sorry, those nicknames were already taken by the Chilton janitors," Rory said with a straight face. "I take it you're not impressed?"

"Amazed is more like it."

Rory shot him a questioning look. "Amazed?"

"Yes. At you. You amaze me."

Not quite knowing what to make of the blatantly honest remark, Rory did what she always did in times like these: change the subject. "Well, if you think _I'm_ amazing, wait until you meet my mom. Hey, Mom!" she called across the backyard, motioning for her mother to join the two.

On her approach, Lorelai joked, "See, Rory? I told you funerals were great places to pick up men!"

Rolling her eyes, Rory said, "In all fairness, **he** picked _me_ up."

"In that case, shame on you!" Lorelai comically smacked Tristin's arm. Then she grabbed his bicep and squeezed. Hard. "Oh, Rory, don't tell me that you've been buying bodybuilders over the internet again..."

"Again?" Tristin asked with a raised eyebrow, smirking as she flushed.

"Don't ask..." she muttered. Then she said, "Mom, this is Tristin Dugrey."

"Bible Boy!" Lorelai exclaimed, gaining the attention of several of the dwindling occupants of the backyard. Once they saw who was responsible for the exclamation, they returned to their previous conversations; they were used to Lorelai's weird spontaneous outbursts.

"Does everyone know about that nickname?" he grumbled.

"Who do you think came up with it?" Lorelai jumped in proudly. "So hey, Bible Boy, you drove all the way to Stars Hollow just to see my daughter?"

He wasn't about to lie. He knew she wouldn't believe him if he did. Plus, he had no real reason to. "Yes, ma'am."

"Ma'am?" Lorelai screeched in what Rory had dubbed her ranting tone. "I_ know_ you did not just "ma'am" me! Do I look like a sixty year old lady with a walker? I don't think so!" She poked his chest at certain words to emphasize her point. "My name is Lorelai. Use it, or you will suffer the wrath that is me without coffee."

"Mom, don't bruise our guest," Rory cut in, gently pulling Lorelai's hand away from Tristin. "Even though I'm sure he can take it. Tough military school graduate and all." She only smiled sweetly when he shot her a dirty look.

"Guest?" Lorelai asked instead, voicing the question that Tristin himself was wondering about.

"Yes. I figure Tristin could stick around Stars Hollow for a few days so we can catch up." She turned to face Tristin now, her eyes asking him to concede.

"Well, I suppose I can hang around for a while," he answered slowly.

His agreement delighted Rory to no end. She turned quizzical eyes to her mother, who consented for the reasons that, namely, she almost always let Rory have her way, but she was also curious about the infamous Bible Boy's impromptu return. "All right, we have a guest this weekend," Lorelai agreed. "You will be given a room at the Dragonfly, but you have to pay for it. I'm sure one of your Platinum cards should cover it?"

"Yes, ma'am. I mean, Lorelai," he quickly amended, hoping to avoid another rant. Not for the first time was he grateful for his experience at military school. Since then, his car always housed a duffel that held extra sets of clothes and other travel necessities. At least he was physically prepared for a stay in Stars Hollow. He couldn't say he was psychologically prepared.

"Wow, he's polite," Lorelai commented smartly to Rory. "We're going to have to break him of that habit." With a wink to Tristin, she joined a group of people leaving the backyard.

"Your mother is..." he trailed off, not quite knowing the appropriate word to use.

"Yeah, she is," Rory agreed, seemingly unbothered by the lack of adjective. Tugging on his shirt sleeve, she started walking back to her house.

Falling into step beside her, Tristin smiled to himself as she kept a firm grip on his sleeve. It wasn't like he was going anywhere, so he found the gesture both insanely cute and amusing.

"So, you're back in Connecticut, officially?" she wanted to know.

"For the summer, at least."

"How was military school?" she asked hesitantly.

Jaw clenching just slightly, he knew she felt him tense up from the way his biceps invariably flexed under her grip. "Can we save that story for later?"

"Sure, no problem." She led them inside her house, which was already swimming with people.

The house was small and filled with what looked to be an eclectic array of mismatched furniture and crazy knickknacks. It was the polar opposite of his manor, which was known expressly for form and not function. On more than one occasion while growing up, he had overwhelming urges to take all of the expensive, pretty objects and smash them so that he could piece them back together into something more... ordinary and attractive. This house was like that - a mosaic of pretty things.

Clearing his throat, he decided to focus on what he tentatively deemed a safer topic. "Did you know... the deceased.. well?"

"A little too well, actually. To be honest, I didn't really care for him."

"What? But you gave his eulogy!" Tristin said incredulously, watching her face carefully to see if she was joking.

"Yeah, my mom and I flipped a coin, and I lost." She motioned for him to follow her to the buffet table, where she grabbed a plate and proceeded to pile it with food. "He just couldn't keep his paws to himself. But poor Babette. He wasn't her favorite by any means, but she loved him nonetheless. Every time she kicked him out of the house, he would always go next door and try to get us to let him in. We just chased him under the house. Good riddance."

Now Tristin was more than a little confused. "You... you chased him under the house? How old was he?"

"Umm..." Rory paused, thinking on this a moment. "About 44, I believe." She paused to stuff a cookie into her mouth. "I'm surprised he lived that long. He really wasn't very bright."

"Rory! That is no way to talk about someone who has passed away!" To say that Tristin was shocked was an understatement. Did Rory really feel that way about this Claude person?

"Oh yeah. Did I mention that Claude was a cat?" Rory asked innocently, watching with growing interest as his expression flashed with a myriad of different emotions before finally settling on his trademark smirk. She didn't know why, but she was relieved to see that some things _did_ stay the same.

"A cat," he repeated slowly.

"Yes."

"You're having a funeral for a cat."

"Have I mentioned that the townspeople are crazy?" Rory offered helpfully.

"No, but I don't think you needed to." And again he was back to wondering how he was going to survive in this tiny town.

"Tristin, come meet Lane," Rory said suddenly, setting her plate on the table and linking her arm through his.

Oh yeah; Rory was how he was going to survive.

For the next hour or so, Tristin allowed himself to be led around to meet various groups of people. This included Babette, the woman whose cat died; Miss Patty, the scary woman who ran the dance studio and kept eyeing him like he was a pinup in a raunchy magazine; Taylor, the town annoyance, as Rory called him in a conspiratorial whisper before they approached him; Kirk, the local bumbling but entertaining fool; and, of course, Lane, the hyperactive best friend who asked him about twenty questions all in one breath, all of which he managed to dodge with Rory's assistance.

"Are the people here always this overwhelming?" he asked once they were seated in a moderately quiet and unoccupied corner of the room.

"No, not really. Usually they're more so."

He regarded her answer and saw that she was quite serious, and that worried him some. He was used to dealing with societal busybodies, not small-town gossips. They couldn't exactly be dealt with in the same manner. Judging from some of the reactions he had gotten, he would venture it safe to say that he was the town's newest zoo exhibit.

"Ready to get to your room at the inn?" Rory asked, giving him a sympathetic look.

Oh, was he ever. "Let's go."

Grabbing Lorelai away from her argument with Lane over the cuteness of some obscure band's drummer - but not before interjecting her own opinion - Rory grabbed the keys to the jeep and ushered them all in.

"You're just going to let these people stay in your house while you're gone?" Tristin asked incredulously. His parents barely felt comfortable enough to leave the maids alone in a room, and some of them had been with the family since before Tristin was born!

"Well, of course. Who wants to break up a perfectly good funeral party?" Lorelai scoffed as if it were the most obvious answer in the world.

"Ah. And why am I not driving my own car over there?"

"It's for your own protection," Rory reassured him as she pulled onto the street. "A few years ago my dad showed up on a motorcycle, and the town talked for days. They are apparently attracted to new, shiny objects. And your Benz SLK is definitely shiny."

"Wait - you _know _what kind of car I drive?"

"Of course we do," Lorelai defended. "We happened to have a subscription to one of those car magazines for a year!"

"Mom was trying to win the Publisher's Clearinghouse Sweepstakes," Rory explained, "so she subscribed to a large handful of obscure magazines."

"Of course, the grease-slick hunky men on the magazine covers had nothing to do with it," Lorelai continued in a wistful voice. "No, I subscribed only for the articles."

"Naturally." Tristin rolled his eyes.

"You're going to like the Dragonfly," Rory told him, meeting his eyes briefly through the rearview. "Mom and Sookie do a great job with it."

"Oh, so you run the inn?" Tristin asked Lorelai interestedly.

"Yes, I also co-own it," Lorelai answered matter-of-factly, chuckling as Tristin gawked.

Lorelai ran and owned her own inn? Now he knew where Rory inherited her ambitious nature from.

"Wait until you try Sookie's desserts," Rory gushed, stopping at a red light. "Her spiced apple crêpes are awesome."

"Her food is the best you'll ever taste," Lorelai added.

"Next to Luke's, of course," Rory corrected. "We eat all of our meals at Luke's. He's our caffeine provider. Or, as he sometimes refers to himself, our enabler."

"Luke?" Tristin wrinkled his nose. Was that someone that Rory had already introduced him to? He had met so many people in such a short amount of time. And it wasn't like the polite meeting of people at a Hartford social event. Here, he knew he would be expected to recognize faces and remember names.

"Yeah, Luke. He runs the diner right over there." Rory pointed out the passenger window to a little diner. "You'll meet him later when we have dinner."

"Luke is gonna have a field day with him," Lorelai muttered to Rory, but not quietly enough.

After overhearing Lorelai's comment, Tristin felt a wave of apprehension build up in his stomach. Should he be nervous about meeting this Luke person?

When Lorelai started discreetly humming the funeral march, he knew he was in for it.  
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A few days in Stars Hollow... Can Tristin survive the madness? (insert ominous music here) Methinks he'll be able to withstand the craziness! If not, what the hell am I writing this fic for?

Anyway, please review! Tell me what you think! Tell me what you don't think! Tell me what you should think! Tell me what I should think! Reviews are much loved and coveted and stored in my mind with my CMM obsession.

As always, thanks for reading. Until next chapter then!


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